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“Pray for the Gazan Boy”

Highlighting the saga of Gaza families lamentably displaced by the bombings, as civilians unfortunately are in even the most justified wars, the reporters interviewed the members of one such family, whose home stands next to a Hamas compound.

After recounting “the utter fear and panic they all felt as the missiles hit,” the father of the family’s bemoaning of the fact that “we have no shelters in Gaza” and his expression of concern for his elderly, paralyzed mother, one of the reporters had the idea of asking the man’s 13-year-old son for his view of the situation.

The boy, taking, as the dispatch put it, “an unusual stand for someone in Gaza,” responded: “I blame Hamas. It doesn’t want to recognize Israel. If they did so there could be peace. Egypt made a peace treaty with Israel, and nothing is happening to them.”

Were only such insight and common sense as contagious in the Palestinian world as hatred and violence have been.

Kudos to The Times for including the quote. But brickbats, too, for taking the astoundingly irresponsible step of actually identifying the quoted boy by name.